Kamalamma *

*won the Gouri Mazumdar Poetry Prize in 2000 (published in Seablue Child, Kolkata: Brown Critique, 2002)

Kamalamma’s lips
betel-chewing red
some local lipstick
and a Friday night ritual.
A loan of endless forgetfulness
and scattered jasmine
breathing in partnership
scanty air from windows overlooking
other despairs.

Five sons (eight children) later
she is a cook at the union office.
Busy men fight causes.
Radicals abuse governments.
Kamalamma posts a thousand letters
licks as many stamps
mentions her husband’s muscular prowess
just in case
and serves out the tea.

Ten years.
The union is dead.
What has grown is Kamalamma’s drumstick tree
proving useful in a corner of the garden.